Time to be Creative: Five-Word Fiction #03 | The Man by The River

At the edge of the world, on a cliff, there’s a river. With the tallest cascade and water made out of glitter. The fishes are all kinds of colors and shapes, and the algae are purple and they look like vine grapes.

Sitting down by the river, under a big old tree, is a man wearing white and a hat made of bees. He’s always in the shade as he’s afraid of the sun, with a bucket of corn, and a glass full of rum.

The people from the village all know well “Crazy Joe”, he’s amusing to everyone and harmful to none. All he does is spend day and night by the river, telling a horror story that could scare the worst sinner.

He moved to a cottage when he was three years of age, in the middle of the woods, it looked more like a cage. His bedroom was painted orange and had a very wide window, with a missing piece of glass that was covered with a card of Bingo.

He didn’t like the new cottage, he didn’t like the new room, he hated living his life in the middle of the woods. But what really terrified him, is what drove him to craziness, an idle episode, made out of just clumsiness.

In de middle of the night, and remember he was three, he woke up and left the bed because he needed to pee. He was going to the bathroom but after a couple steps, looking at him through the window was a skeleton in place.

The skeleton had big eyes and was glowing in the dark, and was dancing with the win, and had many teeth as sharks. He couldn’t believe his eyes, as he stroked them with his fists. He quickly went back to bed and pray for the skeleton not to exist.

The next day, early in the morning, the skeleton wasn’t there. It could have been just a nightmare, and that was all that he cared. Until sometime had passed by, one year exactly to mark, when the skeleton reappears, on the window, in the dark.

This happen for many years and made poor Joe very crazy, he never could understand and his memories were hazy. The only thing he remembers is since the day they moved out, the skeleton was never there, in the window of the new house.

One thing that we have to know, that “Crazy Joe” never knew, is that one clumsy mistake was made by the moving crew. As the boxes were loaded with not much hesitation, one box was left behind, named “Halloween Decoration”.